It might not look like much, but Roomba is the king of home robots, leading the way for over six million iRobots into households around the world.

Hard economic times? Don’t tell that to iRobot. The maker of Roomba and Packbot just posted record earnings for the third quarter. Revenue was up 28 percent over the same quarter of 2010, and through September of this year revenue is up 17 percent to $334.7 million. The record numbers “far exceeded” expectations, prompting the company to increase its expected 2011 earnings. At the same time, the rest of us should expect the continued rise in the number of robots in our households to make our lives easier.

The secret to iRobot’s success is their small army of home robots whose job it is to take over our chores – allowance-free. The most well-known of them, Roomba, not only turned vacuuming into a fun and hands-off chore, but by doing the dirty work in millions of households worldwide, the little workers are changing people’s perception of what exactly a robot is.

While Roomba vacuums your living room, Scooba is scrubbing the bathroom floor, Verro is powerwashing your pool, and Looj is clearing out your gutters. You can kick back, catch the game, and the house will be spic-and-span just in time for the in-laws.

The boom in business, which iRobot chairman and CEO Colin Angle said “far exceeded our expectations,” caused the company to increase their 2011 earnings-per-share expectations by 25 percent. It was the second time the company has increased their full 2011 estimate.

Not a bad year.

iRobot is responding to Department of Defense cuts, expected in 2012, by downsizing their military robotics division that builds the popular Packbot.

iRobots, of course, don’t just do housework. Their 510 PackBots and 710 Warriors are doing some seriously heavy lifting for the US in the Afghanistan and Iraq war zones as well as helping Japan explore and clean contaminated nuclear reactors damaged in the March earthquake. Revenue from their Government and Industrial Robots division also got a shot in the arm: a 21 percent increase from the third quarter of 2010. Delivery orders, which totaled $51 million for the quarter, were mostly for PackBots and their SUGVs (Small Unmanned Ground Vehicles). Despite the growth, however, iRobot is downsizing its military division in response to anticipated cuts to government-funded military research in 2012. In the coming months the Boston-based company plans to cut 55 jobs, a company spokesman told the Boston Business Journal. As of January 2011 the company employed a total of 657 workers.

On the heels of their recent success, iRobot shows no signs of slowing down. With plans to enter new markets, the corporation has already begun work on new kinds of robots. Earlier this year they introduced us to Ava, an autonomously-guided, mobile robotics platform that has an iPad for a head (or a PC tablet, a smart phone, etc.). This mobile interface will allow us to chat with doctors outside of the clinic, product experts right there in the store, become a night watchman, or help inspect products on the assembly line. Run by apps for Apple (iOS) and Google Android, Ava’s versatility is only limited by developers’ imaginations. Not the most robotic-looking of robots. Expect to hear about Ava next year when she becomes available.

As an indicator of their good fortunes, iRobot just hired an advertising agency to peddle their increasingly popular robots. Mullen, a fellow company based in the Boston area, will create ads for Roomba, Scooba, and Looj.

Like the humble-looking Roomba, iRobot started from humble beginnings. Colin Angle was in a doctorate program when he founded the company – back in 1990. He had no venture capitalist backing and, as he said in an interview with MIT earlier this year, they went six years wondering each month if they were going to meet payroll. Ever heard of Genghis, iRobot’s attempt at space exploration? Or Ariel, their crablike robot designed to sniff out mines in surf zones?

In the interview, Angle talks about how the company might have grown faster had he “had a greater appreciation for understanding customer needs.”

As six million home robots can attest to, I think it’s safe to say he’s figured it out.

[image credits: Panorama.it and iRobot]
image 1: Angle
image 2: packbot
image 3: Ava

The new 700 series of Roomba from iRobot is smart enough not to take the stairs.

iRobot is proud to announce some new additions to their family. The reigning champions of robot vacuuming are looking to stay on top with the new 700 series of Roomba, and the Scooba 230. Both will be on display at CES this week, and are set to be released for US distribution this spring. The 700 series Roomba comes equipped with a touchscreen, better cleaning strategies, and 50% more battery life than its predecessor vacuums. Scoobas are iRobot’s hard floor scrubbing systems – in other words, their robo-mops. The 230 is a major decrease in size from previous models, measuring only 6.5 inches in diameter and just 3.5 inches tall. With that smaller footprint the bot should be able to mop around your toilet and in other hard to reach places in your bathroom and kitchen. You can watch the Scooba 230 in action in the advertising video from iRobot below. While improvements in hardware are impressive for these models, the biggest innovations have been in their intelligence. The Roomba 700 series and the Scooba 230 are signs that the household robots of the future are going to work smarter, not harder.

The new Scooba is small enough to fit in tight places that you probably don't want to go.

While the Roomba has made its way into the general consciousness, the mainstream public may not realize that there are models from iRobot which use water and scrubbing brushes to clean hardwood floors, tile, and linoleum. The Scooba, however, has been available for sometime. In fact, various ships in the US Navy have been using them to free up their sailors to perform more valuable tasks than swabbing the deck. Like its larger predecessors, the Scooba 230 has a reservoir of cleaning solution that it slowly depletes and replaces with dirty water as it washes, scrubs, and squeegees the floor. iRobot makes a big deal out of the fact that soiled water is never used to clean the surface (unlike with a bucket and mop). They even claim that a properly used Scooba 230 will eliminate 97% of bacteria. That may be playing on people’s tendency to erroneously equate a lack of bacteria to cleanliness, but it does make for one heck of a sales pitch. The following video is an ad for Scooba that highlights its other fine attributes.

The Scooba 230 will cost $300 when it hits shelves this spring. While its likely to prove a big improvement over previous Scoobas, I do wish the 230 hadn’t given up on sweeping and mopping at the same time. Having to pick up loose dirt before letting the Scooba out isn’t going to be hard, but it does seem to defeat the purpose a bit.

Like the Scooba 230, the Roomba 760, 770, and 780 have their selling points. The 700 series is sleeker than previous Roombas, and its touchscreen interface does away with buttons that often get dusty or sticky after months of use (780 only). iRobot also states that the battery life for the new Roomba is 50% greater than its predecessors, though they don’t specify which older model they are referring to. For those with allergies, or pets, the inclusion of two HEPA filters will also be a strong positive. Roomba 760 will have a $450 price tag and we should expect the 770 and 780 to be incrementally more expensive when they are also released in spring 2011.

The physical perks of these new iRobot models really aren’t that exciting to me. After all, “smaller”, “sleeker”, and “stronger” are terms that any vacuum company can claim. What we should focus on is that these robotic devices are also “smarter” and more “sensitive”. Both the Scooba 230 and the Roomba 700 series use iRobot’s iAdapt technology. By analyzing sensor input collected 64 times per second, iAdapt allows these robots to cycle through dozens of cleaning routines that best fit their surroundings. A new feature, called Persistent-Pass Cleaning Pattern allows the Roomba 700 series to rapidly go over a difficult portion of the floor to maximize its cleanliness. A “Dirt Detector” allows the Roomba 760 to use an acoustic sensor to locate larger particles on the floor such as sand. The 770 and 780 come with a more advanced package that also uses an optical sensor to find large objects like popcorn. Both the Roomba and Scooba come with more sensitive bumpers, allowing the bots to push past curtains and bed skirts but not knock over heavier objects. There’s also a cliff detection feature so your expensive robot doesn’t destroy itself by falling down the stairs.

These improvements in intelligent cleaning routines and sensor technology may or may not get your floors cleaner – I haven’t had a chance to test the bots on my own turf to see how they perform. Hopefully I’ll be able to rectify that sometime in the months ahead.

I do know that competitors like Neato Robotics are focusing on mapping terrain (so the robot can plan its route through a room) while iRobot continues to develop behaviors that adapt to sensor input (like a smart and tidy insect that buzzes around until its job is done). Again, I’m not sure which of these approaches will ultimately benefit you more in the war against household mess, but it’s clear that both are going to be helpful in the development of personal robotics. When we look at larger more powerful examples of robots, like Willow Garage’s PR2, we see that both planned and behavioral/adaptive solutions are key in solving many tasks in human environments. Whether or not these new iRobot models become wildly popular, the techniques developed during their creation could be beneficial to the greater robotics community as a whole.

For the past decade, iRobot has more or less been the face for household robotics. To that end, the better these new models perform the more the public is likely to believe in and support automation in the home. Even the iRobot competitors that I speak to tend to support the company because its success helps grow the household robotics industry as a whole. In other words, I wish iRobot the best of luck with their new models, and I’m not alone in that sentiment.

TV shows like the Jetsons convinced us that the robots in our home would look like us, clean like us, and even act like us. So far that simply isn’t true. But Roomba, the little vacuuming bot that has sold millions, continues to get better every year. It’s a decent maid, and not a bad ambassador for robot-kind either.

Don’t get jealous, Rosie.

[image and video credits: iRobot]
[sources: iRobot]

Neato's ready to ship you an XV-11.

Unlike most robot invaders, Neato‘s XV-11 didn’t leave my house a flaming wreck. That’s probably because it’s a vacuum. The latest technology in robotic cleaners, the XV-11 ($399) is head and shoulders above first generation bots like the Roomba. That’s because the little vacuum uses a top-mounted laser detection system and advanced mapping software to plan the best route to clean your carpet. I got to test drive the XV-11′s in my home this week, right as they were shipping out to customers for the first time. The robot did not disappoint. Check out some of its successes and limitations in the video highlights below.

Taking a robot home is probably one of the cooler things a technophile like myself can do. There’s just something about unwrapping a machine and watching it explore your home like a new puppy that makes me smile. Still, the cuteness of the XV-11 wears off pretty quickly, and well it should. This is a working robot, and I was anxious to see how well it worked. Rather than read the instruction manual carefully and optimize my home to see how well the robot could clean, I took the lazy approach. I plugged the docking station into the nearest outlet, set the robot to clean as soon as possible, placed some obstacles out, and hoped for the best. It’s supposed to be a smart robot, right? I might as well be as dumb as possible and see what happens. The results were surprisingly good.

My apartment, for better or worse, isn’t that big. (Curse you San Francisco real estate prices!) With the doors to the bedroom and bathroom open, the XV-11 could clean my whole home in one charge. That was nice. It also happened to work out that the dustbin could handle the whole house without having to be emptied (which you have to do on your own). All in all, I did almost nothing to help the robot out during its process and the floors ended up as clean (if not cleaner) than when I vacuum on my own. Score one for Neato.

That being said, the robot didn’t work perfectly. There were some clear limitations, most of which I could have anticipated after visiting Neato back in February. Here’s where the XV-11 had problems:

Getting Tangled In the Brush: The one area where I absolutely had to intervene was in dislodging the robot from entanglements. This is what I call the “tassel problem” as the bot was determined to eat the decorative fringe on my rug. Like all vacuums, the XV-11 can get fabric and wires caught in its intake, but unlike uprights, it doesn’t have you following it around to get it free. An unsupervised XV-11 will simply shut down and wait when it gets caught. That’s the safe thing to do, but it does mean you could come home to find your bot sitting and stuck, waiting for your help like some kind of petulant child. Having to go through the house and tuck away wires and loose fringe makes owning an autonomous robot vacuum less fun, but it’s a necessity.

This image sums up the advantages of having a smart robot vacuum. The light shows the path the XV-11 took to clean a test area. There's little time or power wasted on overlap.

Sliding Objects: The XV-11 uses laser guidance and an advanced mapping process (SLAM) to plan its route and avoid obstacles. It updates its map constantly, meaning you can walk around the bot and it won’t freak out – it will just reroute itself. The same happens when it accidentally knocks a moveable object around. Which can be a bad thing. It dragged a bathmat around my bathroom, and a stool around my kitchen, but then avoided the places where they landed. This inevitably caused it to miss a few spots in the cleaning process. Now, most people probably don’t vacuum their kitchen and bathroom linoleum, so this won’t be a concern for many. Still, it’s a limitation to consider.

Lost On User Error: While the robot is capable of finding its way home, it failed to do so in my apartment. Why? I didn’t to read the instruction manual. The bot needs some clear space around the station (several feet) to maneuver its way in. You’re supposed to put the dock against a wall and far from any corner. I, however, just plugged the thing in and left it where it laid. Not a good plan. The bot knocked its charging station a few times during the course of its cleaning. Once it finished vacuuming it got close to recharging, but didn’t make it home without help. It took me a while to figure out how to get the bot to finally dock (I had to clear a lot of obstacles and reset the dock). All of this is clearly ‘user error’, but I’m putting this down as a limitation anyway. Why? Because humans take their appliances for granted. Sure we shouldn’t overload the clothes washer, or forget to change the oil in our cars, or leave the coffee pot on forever…but we do. Simply stated, we should keep in mind that the XV-11 isn’t human-proof.

The following video highlights the more interesting moments of the vacuum cleaning my house. The raw footage was 50+ minutes, so forgive me for editing heavily to get this down to around 8. Keep in mind that the bot is pretty boring when it’s working well, so I skipped the majority of the time it performed without a fuss.

I had a brief chat with Neato when I returned the robot, and learned that they are still very much interested in improving and innovating the XV-11 moving forward. A software patch (which will be available even if you’ve already received your XV-11) will help the robot avoid things get stuck in its brush, hopefully eliminating or at least reducing the frequency of the “tassel problem”. Neato is also looking for feedback from its first generation users to help plan future models of the device. My suggestion: let the bot connect with a computer so that a user can see the maps it makes and tell the robot exactly where to go in their home (Neato says this is one of the ideas they’re considering).

Bottom line, Neato makes a great robot vacuum. At $399, it isn’t the cheapest, but I think you definitely get your money’s worth. It has some clear limitations – I think I would definitely do a little tiddying up before I let the XV-11 work unsupervised – but it’s a very useful robot to have around the house.

And there will be more robots around the house. We’ve had domestic bots in the form of appliances for many years (think garage door openers and dishwashers), but autonomous devices that roam and work on their own are still something of a rarity. With iRobot’s launch of Roomba earlier in the decade, it looked like the vacuum cleaner would be the gateway for robots to enter into the home. Now Neato is looking to swing that gate open further by giving its XV-11 something that you don’t see in many robots: good decision making. The XV-11 is smart. SLAM constantly lets the robot know where it is, and where it should be going. It plans the route it will take, avoids obstacles, and knows how to get back to its charging station. Those are all cool capabilities for a robot vacuum cleaner to possess, but they are also the basic requirements needed for many household robots you’d want in your house. The number of tasks these bots will take on is going to increase.  A good rule of thumb: if the work is dull, difficult, or dangerous, we’ll eventually design a robot to do it. Whether they are mowing your lawn, washing your windows, or monitoring your house while you’re gone, the domestic bots of the future are going to have a lot in common with the XV-11. Which means they won’t be perfect, but they will be pretty damn cool.

*Full disclosure: Neato did not charge the writer or Singularity Hub for use of its robot. This could be considered a gift.

[image credits: Aaron Saenz/Singularity Hub, Neato Robotics]
[video credits: Aaron Saenz/Singularity Hub]
[source: Neato Robotics]

Navibot has great features to make it better than the Roomba, but the Neato XV-11 could kick its ass.

Samsung’s newest robot vacuum, the Navibot, looks and acts like an improved Roomba. It sports the same round shape but has special whip-like brushes to throw dirt into the path of its vacuum. Navibot’s best innovation over the Roomba, however, is it’s “Visionary Mapping System”. According to the AP, Navibot uses an upwards facing camera to capture images of the ceiling at 30 frames per second. Along with 30+ IR sensors around its periphery, Navibot uses the camera video to map out the room and plan an efficient path for cleaning. The vacuum will even return to its charging station if it’s running low on power. Other features include a drop-sensor so it won’t fall down stairs, a remote control which can vary vacuuming modes, and optional IR fences (Virtual Guards) that can seal off a room into sections. All these capabilities may put Navibot ahead of the Roomba, but it’s still a ways behind Neato’s XV-11. Samsung is launching the Navibot in Europe this year (UK in April) for €399 with one Virtual Guard or €499 with a touchscreen and two Virtual Guards. Check out the promo video from Samsung Europe below.

Nearly all of Navibot’s features are done better by the Neato XV-11. The VMS system is cool, but I think the XV-11′s SLAM and laser range finder do it better. Samsung chose to keep the round shape, even though Neato’s half moon design allows for better vacuuming at edges – those whip-like brushes may look cool, but they aren’t going to suck dirt out of thick carpeting. Both vacuums have an easy to use screen on top, drop sensors, and can return to base in case of power problems (though no word if Navibot will return to work after it recharges). The Neato only costs $399, however, about $150 less than the Navibot.

Those whip-like brushes can help throw dog food to the vacuum brush, but they're not going to work on thick carpet. They also don't help compensate for Navibot's round body extending beyond its rectangular vacuum port.

The only clear advantages Navibot has are in its accessories. Samsung’s choice to include a remote is clutch (sometimes you really don’t want to chase a robot down the hall), and the variable power settings are a great idea. The Virtual Guards, while a little big, let you avoid laying down long strips of magnetic tape. I bet with a little creativity you could hide them behind furniture and leave them installed permanently without messing up your feng shui. Neato, if you’re reading this, think about adding in a remote, variable power settings, and some IR fences – these are all good ideas.

Samsung does deserve praise for the remote control and power settings. These are great innovations that future robot vacuums should adopt.

Who wins in the robot vacuum wars (my money’s on Neato, clearly) probably isn’t as important as the fact that we are having a robot vacuum war. It’s great for consumers. The more competition out there, the better the innovations we’ll see and the lower prices will fall. Importantly, robot vacuums take only a small share of the total vacuum market (~2%). More competition will probably also mean more sales, helping that share grow. That’s good for iRobot, Samsung, Neato and other manufacturers. And it might just help bring home appliances into the 21st century by encouraging more to adopt robot features. Sure we have robotic dishwashers, clothes dryers, and vacuums, but where are the robot ovens and stoves? The robot lawn mowers? The robot cars? C’mon bots, clean my house! I’ve got places to be.

[image credits: Trusted Reviews]
[screen capture and video credit: Samsung]
[sources: Samsung, Associated Press]

The USS Freedom keeps clean with the help of a fleet of bots like these three from iRobot. From left to right they are CS3 Scooba Stevens, Chief Miles O'Brien, and ITSN Unger. All the bots on the ship have names...can you guess the origin for each of these three?

There’s no doubt that robots have been playing a larger role in armed conflicts since the turn of the century. Generally though, we think of these machines as replacing soldiers or augmenting their tactical potential. It may seem silly, but something as simple as including cleaning robots on a ship is a sign that robots could have a larger role to play. Cleaning, cooking, mild maintenance – these tasks are a constant part of military life, but they aren’t the most important part of a soldier’s job. Anything that gives a sailor more time to perform mission critical work is likely to improve that work.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself. While the USS Freedom did pick up the idea of a robot cleaning fleet from Cmdr. Curt Renshaw of the Independence, two instances don’t make a trend. This could just be a naval fad. Yet I think the idea of robots in non mission critical roles could be an important part of the future of armed forces. I hope to find more instances of bots taking on these kinds of jobs, and see how soldiers and sailors react to having more time for rack or real work. Who knows, if sailors are happy with results the entire US fleet could be filled with robotic cleaners. If that happens, let me make a suggestion: upgrade to a Neato.

[image credit: Phil Ewing, Military Times]

Laser range finding, SLAM navigation, an LCD screen and more powerful suction. The XV-11 is a Roomba killer, no doubt about it.

It’s been more than seven years since iRobot introduced the world to the Roomba robotic vacuum. Seven years without fundamental innovation, and its left the market ripe for competition. Enter Neato. This Silicon Valley startup is ready to take the robotic vacuum world by storm. The engineers over at Neato Robotics let us take a tour of their Mountain View home and get a first hand look at the XV-11 ($399), the vacuum robot that’s going to kill the Roomba. Yep, Neato doesn’t like to judge the competition, but I don’t mind talking trash: Neato has a bot that sees better, works smarter, and sucks harder…and that’s a good thing. After talking with VP Patrick De Neale, I can tell you that Neato isn’t just building the next great robotic vacuum, it’s building the next great robotic empire with more than $15 million in funding and retailers lined up to get the vacuum to market. Don’t fret robo-junkies, we’ve got some great videos and pics to sate your hunger for machine machinations after the break.

Why Do We Need a Better Vacuum Bot?

The Roomba is the reigning champ of the vacuum robot industry. iRobot has sold more than 5 million units in the last seven years and they show no sign of stopping. For those who have never watched one in action, the Roomba doesn’t see where it’s going, it just bumps into things. A large bumper sensor in the front lets the Roomba bounce off walls and other obstacles. It uses a series of algorithms to chaotically travel around. This chaos eventually lets the Roomba clean an entire room. It’s not very efficient, and Roomba’s round shape doesn’t let it fit into corners. The Roomba is cool to watch the first time, but I always feel like it didn’t leave the carpet completely clean.

Rather than going back to the drawing board every few years, iRobot has made subtle improvements on a basic design that leaves much to be desired. The Roomba you could buy today cleans in the same way that the Roomba did seven years ago. Why? Because iRobot is spending their time making some cool army and healthcare bots, not innovating the Roomba. That’s why a new company can come along and take advantage of the seven years of lost chances. That’s why Neato is going to explode onto the scene.

Their XV-11 is a laser toting, map making, high suction machine that will clean your floor in just one pass. Neato looked at the standard bump and grind approach of the Roomba and decided it could do better. It started from scratch, looking for a whole new way for the robot to approach vacuuming. The first major innovation: the XV-11 doesn’t wander around randomly, it cleans like you do. It looks, it thinks, and it executes.

Here’s Neato’s promotional video for the XV-11:

On top of the XV-11′s half moon shaped chassis is a laser range finder which sweeps around in a full 360 ° circle. That inexpensive but well performing range finder is the centerpiece of the device and a crucial innovation in robotics, check out the discussion on Hizook for more details. Using that view of its environment, the XV-11 plots out how it will vacuum the room using a method known as SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping). SLAM’s the same technique that helps robotic cars find a parking space.

The following is an exclusive video from Neato showing an early prototype (not the XV-11) mapping a room. Notice those purple footprints moving around? That’s a person walking through the area.

Using this technique and its laser, the XV-11 is able to constantly find its position in the context of the room, and its able to compensate for changes in the environment. When you walk through a room the XV-11 is cleaning, it knows to avoid you. It can also avoid obstacles you place in its way and will go back and clean areas that become open when an object is removed. While you may be inclined to challenge the robot’s skills by maniacally placing chairs in its way, the intended application is that the robot can clean an entire area using straight lines and with a minimum of overlap.

With SLAM, the XV-11 is able to clean smarter. It covers the floor of a room with close to a single pass – no more crazy circles and spirals and bumping exploration like the Roomba. With no time wasted getting lost, the XV-11 can afford to spend more effort on the actual vacuuming. 80% of the power used by the robot goes directly towards sucking carpet. That means cleaner floors in less time.

We got to see a live demo of the XV-11 in action and it was as impressive as watching a robot vacuum can be. Check it out:

But the XV-11 doesn’t just clean more efficiently, it cleans smarter. Neato has incorporated a bunch of new features to prove it’s creating robot vacuum 2.0. It has a square front to help it reach corners but a round butt so it can easily back out of tight spaces. The XV-11 also has a ground sensor to let it know when it comes near a drop. That means it won’t fall down stairs or roll down to a level it can’t climb out of. If you move the charger, the XV-11 will follow it to maintain good contact and keep charging. The bot stops if there’s a problem with the brush, or if it overheats due to something stuck in the intake. The XV-11 even alerts you when the dust bin is full and will wait for you to empty it. Whenever it stops (and you don’t move it around too much) it will resume its cleaning as soon as the problem is fixed. If the room’s too big and the XV-11 runs out of juice mid-vacuuming, it will go charge itself and then return and finish the job. It has that Terminator attitude we all love and fear to see in our household robots.

The XV-11 is smart enough not to fall down stairs.

I think the best of these smart innovations is the inclusion of a LCD screen on the top of the robot. It lets the robot actually tell you when something’s wrong. The screen also provides an easy user interface for when you want to program the bot to follow a regular weekly schedule (I forgot to mention it can do that, too). I watched as De Neale set the clock and programmed the XV-11 for two weekly cleanings – it was fast and painless thanks to the onboard screen.

Of course, the XV-11 has some limitations. First is size. The XV-11′s special moon shape is a good idea, but it’s still too big to get into really narrow spaces. There’s a power vs agility trade off here that every company has to deal with. Neato chose a little bigger, a little more powerful, and that’s a plus and minus.

There’s also some limits in the way the robot works. For mapping and plotting its course, the bot divides its environment into 1 inch cells and I noticed that this means it overlaps its path by about an inch. It also doesn’t hug the walls as closely as I would have liked – it’s closer than an inch, but not right up against it. Despite the use of its laser, the XV-11 still has bump sensors to help it navigate close areas. That’s fine, but as it follows a wall it will bump into it fairly often, and that’s something you won’t see in most of the demo videos.

If you want to seal off an area, Neato will sell you some nice magnetic strip to mark a “no-pass” line. Of course, you then have to either embed the strip in your carpet, leave it on top, or pick it up and replace it each time the vacuum cleans. I would have liked a tiny electronic device (maybe an IR transmitter?) to be used instead.

Overall, however, the XV-11 is a pretty slick operator. De Neale showed us how it could map their entire office for cleaning (thousands of square feet) and handle basically any floor type you threw at it. This robot impresses me as a very efficient device. There was no haphazard exploration, no endless passes over the same patch of carpet like a Roomba. I felt no need to cheer the XV-11 on, to encourage it to miraculously reach the last missing bit of the floor. This isn’t the little robot that could. It’s the robot that did its job, went home, and slept with its charger.

This is a light trace of the XV-11 cleaning a room. It's efficient and leaves the carpet looking nice.

The Company Behind the Machine

Neato Robotics has done really well for itself in a short amount of time. Its funding last year brought in $15 million – a handy amount for a company with just 25 employees. They’ve got the XV-11 on a fast track towards distribution. Pre-orders are available on the Neato site now, and you’re likely to see the bot on Amazon, Hammacher-Schlemmer and other online retailers soon. As of our visit, Neato was still in talks with big box retailers, but they expect many will pick up the robot. By the end of the first quarter of 2010, the XV-11 will be taking on the competition.

Speaking of competition, I went to Neato expecting to hear some major trash talk about iRobot, but I didn’t get zilch. De Neale actually offered praise for competitor’s robotic cleaners, including the Roomba, the Mint, and others. Bottom line, he says, current robots only have about 2% of the entire vacuum market. That’s plenty of room for expansion, and at this level, every competitor is helping grow consumer interest. I understand his reasoning, but having watched both a Roomba and the XV-11…I don’t think there’s much of a comparison. I love iRobot, they do some mind-blowing work in robotics, but they don’t have the best robotic vacuum cleaner anymore. Sorry Roomba, you let yourself rest on your success, and you got sloppy. Now Neato’s here to pick up the pieces. Literally.

When a company makes an impressive robot, you tend to think of them as a robotics company. Yet for Neato, I don’t think its so cut and dry. Are they a robotics company that makes vacuums, or a household appliance company that makes robots? De Neale left the answer somewhat ambiguous. They’re “freeing consumers from traditional household chores.”

Which makes it hard for me to pin down what Neato might be up to next. We got a lot of fun hints at what the XV-11 series 2 or 3 may include (memorizing maps, varied power use for different floor types, remote control) but it was all kept in the hypothetical. I can tell you that their unnamed parts manufacturer in China has wide experience and that Neato has met with many different companies looking to develop household appliance bots. So I guess we could conceivably see Neato expand into other robots that map and perform tasks around your home and office (window washing? garden tending? who knows?) For now though, the company and De Neale seem focused on making the XV-11 a big success.

What happens if the XV-11 does really well? That’s good for Neato, no doubt, but it’s part of a larger picture. Robot vacuums are just one of the many routes automation has taken to get inside your home. Your dishwasher? That’s a robot. So is your garage door opener. As this technology becomes more sophisticated it could lead to a full humanoid robot walking around your house. In our talk, De Neale made an interesting prediction: roboticists aren’t going to take robots to market, consumer developers will. Willow Garage, Honda, Carnegie Mellon…these guys make some amazing bots. But it may be the companies that want to sell appliances that bring robots into the mainstream. That’s an interesting thought. Will robots develop artificial general intelligence or surpass the human brain if we only build them to help out around the house? Eh, maybe not. In any case, at least we know that our floors will be clean.

[photo credits: Neato Robotics]
[video credits: Neato Robotics, Keith Kleiner, Singularity Hub]

A few years ago SNL did a commercial parody about the iRobot Roomba, promoting a women’s robot called the Woomba.  Some will call it poor taste, but for the rest of us the video is one of the more hilarious robot videos out there.  Check it out:

Saturday Night Live – Woomba